It’s a folky female singer/songwriter. “Riverside,” like many tracks on the record, is good but not great. It has the same piano as “Man in Mind” by Ida. I certainly enjoyed listening to this album, but nothing really popped. Same with “Just So” and “Avenue.” They do sound better than the others, but they doesn’t make me say “wow,” either. Just “yeah — that’s fine.” This is the musical interpretation of “Yes, dear.”
The singer sounds like Poe and Susan Ottaviano (Book of Love), the latter especially on “Close Watch.” This one is my favorite. It seems that when she tries to do less that everything turns out a lot better.
The last track is “On Powdered Ground,” but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with skiing. Bits of PJ Harvey and Rasputina can be overheard here, but it’s subtle. This record isn’t bad, but it’s uninspired.

Acoustic singer/songwriter stuff, and she has quite the calming voice. Her melodies use this perfectly, too. “Born in the Wrong Time” has strings that complement the track well.
“Break Up Melody (Pain & Regret)” is so beautiful that I don’t even want to get into a hyphenation debate. She can do whatever she wants when she sounds like this, and that includes the use of ampersands. Sweet holy moly.
Deceptive song titles abound, although it really has more to do with my senseless expectations. There’s no reason a song called “Dance All Night” can’t be about slow dancing. I mean, really, it belongs in an eHarmony commercial. And it’s not even necessarily about slow dancing, but when you see that title, you expect something with a purple sticker or at least a BPM over 100. That’s OK. What matters is that it has pretty harmony during the bridge.
“Mean Man” is the last track and a little slower than the rest, if that’s even possible. Maybe you listen to this one in the morning after binging the night before with a bucket of chicken. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
This could be one of my favorites of 2011.

They do the British Siouxsie and the Banshees thing, maybe with a little more guitar yet also a little more ethereal, Cocteau Twins style. The opening track, “Argyria,” might be about a country whose major exports are ugly socks and sweaters, but it’s hard to say because there aren’t any discernible lyrics until nearly four minutes have passed.
“Light Streams” is slightly cheerier and exposes their roots. This same song done by Americans would be downright depressing. The percussion is mixed a little higher, and it stands out among the slow tempo. This one sounds more like Cocteau Twins as well.
Fans of reverb and occasional haunting male backing vox will like “Chorea.” The sound is tinnier, but this seems to be intentional. It’s definitely music that belongs in a warehouse because of how it would it would echo. The song possesses me with an urge to buy vinyl.
The other song that accurately represents this record is “Eumenides.” You get a good mix of singing and accompaniment here. No Groupon necessary.

With everything going on in the world of online poker these days, it is kind of fitting that the poker laptop died yesterday, shortly after its fourth birthday.

The poker laptop had been serving a much more important role of late, however: serving as the home base of uploading new episodes of the shit show. With that computer conked out, it puts me in a situation I don’t have time to deal with right now. I need a new computer to upload episodes from, and that’s a stupid reason to buy one. If I make new episodes on my iPhone, I can’t save them easily, and I don’t want the only copy to be on a YouTube server in a cloud somewhere.

I may change my mind. It is the Internet, after all, but I really doubt it. The show started out as a tribute to Travis the Mormon, and I was able to get a hold of him because of it, and now we’re friends on Facebook. Then it was chronicling my roommate killing herself, buying a condo, breaking up with my ex, meeting my current girlfriend, and dealing with being unemployed twice. Now, I have it all, and nobody wants to hear someone brag for three minutes a day. But let’s call it a hiatus for now. And there will still be occasional vids from my other YouTube account when I see a show or need to tape another hockey stick. And I’ll probably bring back election episodes because those are just plain fun.

A show that is supposed to be about what I did yesterday is falling by the wayside because I have too many things to do. How about that.